Category: Governance

The European Parliament has voted against a controversial set of copyright rules known as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The vote follows weeks of intensifying protests, with internet companies such as Mozilla and pioneers like Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaking out against the EU’s copyright proposals and Wikipedia taking its …

Uganda’s parliament has passed a law to impose a controversial tax on people using social media platforms. The new Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill will also impose various other taxes, including a 1% levy on the total value of mobile money transactions – which civil society groups complain will affect poorer Ugandans who rarely use banking …

Threats to cyber security are increasingly organised and transnational with no respect for geographical borders. Over the last year, we have seen a significant increase in the scale and severity of malicious cyber activity globally. In the UK, we have seen the impact of major cyber security incidents, such as the WannaCry attack that affected …

Kaspersky seems to be getting into more trouble in the US with its services being either banned or grounded. Months after the US Government ordered its federal agencies to stop using any internet security software provided by Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky indicated it had appealed to a US federal court on the grounds the ban it …

The UK’s cyber security watchdog has warned the UK telecoms sector not to use network equipment or services from Chinese supplier ZTE as it would have a “long term negative effect on the security of the UK”. This is seen as the latest crackdown on telecoms equipment suppliers by governments concerned about the national security …

Russia has banned the Telegram messaging app after it – because the company refuses to reveal its encryption key. A court in Moscow ruled to block the popular app after the firm declined to give state security services access to private conversations. It followed a long-running battle between authorities and Telegram, which has a reputation …

Paris, April 5, 2018: Internet Without Borders is alarmed by the current shutdown of social media platforms and messaging services including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and important news website such as BBC, in Chad. This new case of censorship comes just a few days after Internet Without Borders and partners submitted a report to the UN Human …

The European Commission has suggested that law enforcement authorities could soon have restricted access to the WHOIS database that identifies website owners because the system is on a collision course with the EU’s strict new data protection law. Law enforcement authorities have complained to the Commission about plans to change the system in May because …

It appears that the European Commission (EC) is not very impressed with a quickly prepared 12-point proposal by ICANN to resolve the conflict between the domain name system’s Whosis service and the GDPR which will officialy be launched in May 2017. “Given the level of abstraction of the models, it is difficult to assess the …

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order today vowing to protect and strengthen net neutrality rules, despite the FCC’s recent decision to roll back regulations. Why it matters: New York joins Montana as the only two states to require ISPs to abide by net neutrality rules. But that doesn’t mean the executive orders …